It is well known that a hot spring, in particular a mineral spring, therapy is very effective for recovering from fatigue, soothing muscular fatigue and pain, accelerating circulation of the blood, slimming fatness and activating internal organs and so on. This therapy is designed to warm the body by the warm water and to accelerate warming operation of the body by absorbing mineral ions contained in warm water, thereby stimulating cells in the body and accelerating perspiration to improve metabolism.
However, hot spring therapy involves difficulty such as as requiring a patient to visit a hot spring or such disadvantage as causing a heavy burden to the heart or other parts of the body, because of soaking the entire body in a bath. When conducting the therapy, therefore, there is not only a possibility to fatigue the body, but it is also not suitable to those who have heart disease or high blood pressure.
In order to avoid such problems, the inventor has some time ago developed a novel apparatus for applying a warm bath therapy to those who have heart disease or the like with ease at home, together with a bathing agent used therein and consisting mainly of a wax containing minerals. The warm bath and the bathing agent are for partly warming the hands and feet soaked in the bath filled with the warm molten bathing agent to realize the body warming effect, which is as good as the body bathing of hot spring therapy.
According to the experiment carried out by the inventor, however, when soaking the hands and feet in the bath, sweat and secretions are excreted from the body to erode the inner surface of the bath since such sweat and secretions are acid. As a result, the bath becomes unusable due to deterioration.
In addition, according to the experiment carried out by the inventor, since the bathing agent consists mainly of the wax, when it is warmed and molten, convection is not performed sufficiently inside the bath due to its viscosity. Therefore, the bathing agent temperature in the bath is not even and its precise control is difficult, resulting in such problems as scalding the hands and feet when they are soaked in a hot temperature portion, or solidifying the bathing agent at a colder portion to make the soaking difficult.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a warm bath for hands and feet, which solves the above problems at once by devising a structure of the bath in which the bathing agent is filled, and by providing an arrangement of the heating portion for heating the bath.